Answers for June 2005

Another fine month. Nobody got Q1 or Q6. The picture question is one of my finest yet (yes I know – “you should see the others”). And, with apologies to Martina Binford-Winthequiz, who gets the “trying hard award” for noting that recent winners have been double-barrel-named females – I hope the operation was not too painful – the WINNER for June is

James Dale

of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne. This month’s prize is: One free ticket to attend the lecture on “Cryptography”, by Dr S J Roberts, in R.M.I.T. room 8.9.42, at 5:30pm on Thursday 22 September 2005.

Question 1

What country is believed – indeed, has been proved – to be the best in which to study cryptography?

Answer

Plain-Text Answers

#%&*#%^@ I know everyone will do something similar to this, oh well

(&^ JLHV *((~!^ ~!& LIUE~(*()(*&# H:#~(*&

America. You need to be good at maths to be a cryptologist and doing the accounting for the hamburger joints there is a nightmare. They have a very high rate of obesity. The people of america not the hamburgers. Well maybe the hamburgers do and that’s why the people do. Is this relevant?

Any country that doesn’t have English as its primary language. I’m not bilingual.

At last! We are a fast diminishing group but it is good to see that there are still one or two people who know that the past participle of “prove” is “proved” and not that ubiquitous neologism “proven”. As far as the question is concerned, how do you prove that one country is better than another for study? Does it have quieter libraries? Faster internet access? More abundant dappled glades for summer afternoon reading? You can study cryptography anywhere so the best country in which to do it is the one you feel happiest in. You did not ask which country has the best teachers or schools of cryptography so I didn’t answer that.

Australia, where of course the world’s smartest people live.

Axdogskbnjqelrkpagl, of course. (This is how they maintain their high academic standards; only those students of cryptography who show real talent and aptitude can decipher the location and apply for a visa.)

Bttsszmhb, probably. Doctor Bob will know.

China

Cryptsylvania.

East Inscrutabilia.

Egypt

EGYPT – It’s wall-to-wall crypts, most of them heavily graphed on.

Egypt or Transylvania

Egypt. No shortage of crypts or cryptographs there.

England

France

Gotcha Dr. Bob, trick question. The study of cryptography is dead. If the study was to be revived it would have to be mediated through communication with the dead or public servants as studies have revealed there is no difference in brain patterns.

hGyy ts7792^4ndisK iwL And if you can’t solve that, then you aren’t adequately trained to know the answer.

I could tell you … but then I would have to kill you

I was going to say Canada but knowing you, it must be Iceland.

Iceland – if the locals can work out all that -dottir and -son stuff so easily then decrypting national secrets becomes a doddle.

Iceland (going on probability we’re due an Iceland question).

Israel, full of crypts and secrets.

Italy

It’s gotta be Iceland. Are there really any other countries? [No]

J EPO’U LOPX.

Poland?…Is it Poland?…I think its Poland…no, I’ll go with Egypt. Nah, better make it Poland.

Russia

Since cryptography is the art of converting plain English into meaningless unintintelligible gibberish, we are talking Australian government here, aren’t we ?

South Korea.

The country with the most crypts!

The Former Soviet Union

The People’s Republic of the Internet.

The Press Gallery, Canberra, Australia. Those polly cats crept into the crypt, crapt and crept out again.

The United States, until you want to take your work elsewhere…

The Vatican has a lot of crypts. And there are two pop culture books about code based on Catholic stuff by Dan Brown. Look at that – my witty and serious guesses are the same. Everybody drink.

Transylvania. Critical mass of crypt dwellers

Question 2

What festival is celebrated on 14 March or 22 July each year?

Answer

Pi Day, and Pi Approximation Day (3.14 or 22/7)

Other Answers

A festival can’t be celebrated on two different dates that have approx, four months between them! [Oh yes it can. My birthday, for example, is such a source of multiple festivities. No wonder I am getting so old]

Ah, that would be Pi Day and Pi Approximation Day. Now all I need to know is the weight of Pi. Where should I go to weigh a Pi Doctor Bob?

Are you handicapping this for the Yanks? We can win fair and square you know. With the date in the -ahem- proper order 3/14 (3.14) and 7/22 are both approximations for pi. In the use the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics sponsors pi day on March 14. Perhaps Education Queensland recommends July 22?

Iceland’s CryptoFests, both of them. They’re sort of like a big barbecue except with prime numbers instead of prime beef.

I’m not sure… but give me the address and I will be happy to participate

It might be celebrated on 14 March, but the real Pi day is 22/7. 3.14 is a pretty poor approximation, even if it is Einstein’s birthday.

Let’s see, what would they celebrate on 3.14 or 22/7? Such roundabout scheduling will never get others to share their ‘pi’ in the sky dreams of a holiday.

March of the living? or a schizophrenic’s birthday

mardi gras

May day?

My birthday and that of one of the voices in my head – Bill is his name. Bill is a charming person and is my favourite, much better than that horrible Bob who keeps throwing stupid questions at me.

My insurance premium is up for renewal then.

No it isn’t. What is on 2nd.

Passover

Pi Day or Pi Approximation Day. They aren’t the same celebration, but they’re celebrated by the same math nuts around the world, so it seems quite the same, considering the date variant.

Pie day, where you either get to eat 3.14 pies, or 22/7. Einstein loved to stuff his face, so he chose 14 March to be the real pie day. And of course, in Turkey, every day is Pide. [Groannnnn]

Ramadan

Saints Day

St Patrick’s Day? No, too obvious.

Thanksgiving

The 14th of March is my birthday, and also einstein’s. If you write it “The American Way”, you end up with 3/14, which means it can be called “pi day”. As for festivals, I don’t know. But my birthday’s more important than anything else. Except the need for me to have access to my horoscope every day.

The Adoration Of Marvellous Me, and you got the question wrong, it’s celebrated on 14 March AND 22 July, as well as 3 August AND 6 November. Where were you in March? I shall expect redoubled efforts of worship in July. Remember, everybody, don’t send prayers, send chocolate!

The annual festival of the Drinking of the Beer in Australia. Everywhere else it’s the annual festival of the Cleaning Up After the Australians.

The cult of Einstein Festivals. Celibrants spend the March Day drinking to his birthday July 22nd is a day for Einsteinites to visit mediums to talk to him about his theories on death as it is the only day he will talk to the living.

The depressing and mathematical International Pi Day. The two days are thus due to their ability to be written as 3.14 or as 22/7. However the official day is March 14. A teacher at my high school holds the official world ranking of 19th in reciting pi. He can do around 20 000 digits. Pity him.

The feast of St. Maybe the Indecisive.

The Festival of the Forgotten Ides. The Ides, of course, being an obscure tribe of depressed people with fifteen toes and fingers who lived in an arid area of Arabia.

The Festival of the Incalendarates.

The festival or celebration of indecisiveness or indecision or something or other I think or believe….or not

The Icelandic clog dancing festival is held on March 14 each year in honour of St Gertrud unless there is still snow on the ground in which case it is moved to July 22 to coincide with the Olafsvik short film festival.

There’s heaps, two that spring to mind are William S. Paley Television Festival and the Victorian Festival of Wine.

USA: Pi Day in March. Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel’s birthday in July.Australia: Pi day in July. Waclaw Sierpinski’s birthday in March.

World “we can’t decide on either 14 March or 22 July” Day.

Question 3

How many birds are typically shredded annually by a large wind turbine?

Answer

0.2 birds/turbine/year

Steve Symonds’s Even More Correct Answer

That depends on where you are and whose report you read. The Danish wind farms kill no birds but they have reports of a few being killed at Altamont Pass in California. Another source puts the annual kill at Altamont at 4700 birds. The truth lies somewhere in between. Wind farmers never seem to find dead birds under turbines but greenies find lots of them. Perhaps the greenies go round before the farmers.

Other Answers

10

10.000

100.000

10000

2 million

2000

4,700 or negligible depending on whom you believe. Anyway my wind turbine is inside and about 1 chicken a week is shredded and digested – so 52 annually.

Aah. This is like the how long is a piece of string question. The answer is 4, to be used only for the good of mankind or in the rampant cooking shows currently dominating television. (ie for evil)

African, or European [birds]? MP reference. Everybody drink.

All the slow ones

Depending on how well it was sited, between 0 and 3 per annum. Damn, and I was hoping the wind power craze would deal to some of those revolting sulfur crested squawking flying rats.

Depends which turbine. One I can think of has never shredded a bird. Well not to my knowledge. Others on average kill one or two a year. But not all of them are shredded.

Do all large wind turbines shred birds?

Enough to fill all the galah pies needed for March 14.

Gee, that’s a tough one. To shred a bird annually involves accurate alignment of the bird’s fundament with the shredding mechanism, while inserting one in the other. And this would not be likely to occur too often in nature. So I’m saying that the answer is “None”. Actually, wind turbines seem to go slow enough for most birds (with the exception of ostriches, cassowaries, penguins and emus) to ride on the blades for fun. Oh, another exception: galahs – the only bird that is stupid enough to fly INTO oncoming traffic.

Given a constant supply of fowl, a LOT. The OTHER secret in the Colonel’s recipe, making up the trinity of KFC secrets along with “Why does the English language spell colonel like the French but pronounce it like the Spanish?”

Ha! Now that I would like to see

How large is a large wind turbine? Large compared to a human, or large compared to the universe?

I object to the word shredded in this instance. Diced is a more appropriate word.

In Altamont Pass slightly more than one bird/windmill year gross. Probably less than zero net when you take into consideration the environmental damage of burning fossil fuels. BTW I used to live in the area (actually Fremont 10 miles, or so away). The windmills used to have enough power to power the city of Tracy until everyone in the San Francisco Bay Area had to move to Tracy to afford housing.

Just enough to bake into a pie.

Millions. After all how else could we enjoy our morning bowls of “Shredded Tweet” ?

None – it doesn’t work that way

None as they all are too smart to go near the shredding machines. It tends to be drunken parachuters that are shredded by them. There are no true figures around as it tends to be the military who are shredded and they like to keep their alcoholic mishaps under wraps.

None, if it hasn’t been erected.

None. There is no recorded instance of a bird being shredded more than once by a large wind turbine, much less on a yearly basis.

Real birds: 400.000, Women: 5.

The 43 dumbest ones. Natural selection at work.

The exact number needed to fill the glutenous maw of the Molech that live in any particular large wind turbine.

They’re too busy generating electricity to go off on a bird shredding holiday

To quote Bayswater Car Rental “no birds.” (west aussie joke)

Very few a shredded, most are just clobbered really hard and then fall to the ground. See http://www.mpsutility.com/TurbineStats.htm for some really fascinating wind turbine facts. One that stands out is “22rpm”. At 22rpm you would have to slowly feed the bird into the fan achieve the shredding effect.

Well, now, Dr. Bob, that would depend on where that large wind turbine was located. And how willing to be honest the folks who keep track of such things actually are. And they aren’t necessarily shredded, they’re sometimes just bonked senseless and die in their collision with the earth. The estimately vary considerably, but I will guess the average to be between 75 and 100 per year for a large wind turbine.

Well, that depends where you are and who you are. If you live next door to a proposed new wind farm, its thousands a minute, if a wind farm executive, its only very rare already maimed and weak birds, so it is helping natural selection and strengthening the gene pool. 😉 Reports state about 2.9 per turbine per year in the USA and 0.23 to 2.7 per turbine per year in Aust.

Which large wind turbine? (Jet engines are more fun anyway, especially if there’s chicken cannon involvement.)

Which large wind turbine? Be more specific you swine.

Which large wind turbine? There would be different numbers depending on different wind turbines!

Which one? I wonder if there are slicing as well as shredding turbines.

You mean the same birds are shredded every year ? That’s just sick.

Zero – they don’t turn fast enough to shred. [Ha! Wait and see … Tasmanian wind turbines supply power to the grid, which comes across to the mainland. One night soon, we Melburnians are going to ram 50,000 volts back up the cables, make all the Tasmanian turbines go round backwards, acting as fans to cause Tasmania to sail across the ocean and become part of Antarctica].

Question 4

A priest once said to Groucho Marx “Groucho, I’d like to thank you for all the joy you have given to the world”. What did Groucho answer?

Quoting Mr.Groucho Marx:

I’ve had lots of experience with cops and priests. I’ve got to tell you about this priest who came up to me. I don’t know where the hell it was but this priest comes up to me and says “You’re Groucho Marx.” And I agree with him on that, and then he says “Groucho, I’d like to thank you for all the joy you have given to the world”. And I answered, “And I’d like to thank you Father, for all the joy you’ve taken out of the world!”

And thanks to Kim for this equally plausible version –

Then I was in Montreal. I made a quick exit out of the elevator. I was in Montreal and a priest came up to me, puts out his hand and says “I wanna thank you for all the joy you’ve put into this world.” And I shook his hand, and I said “And I wanna thank you, for all the joy you’ve taken out of this world.” He said “Could I use that next sunday in my sermon?” And I said “Yes you can, but you’ll have to pay the William Morris office ten percent.”

Equally Aprocryphal Answers

“And I want to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of it.” Comedy historians agree a succinct “Fcuk you” and face-pie would have been funnier.

“And I want to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of it”, because google means I get at least 1/6, though for all I know it could be a trick question.

“And I would think that a strange sentiment for man so intent on removing so much joy from the world”

“And I’d like to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken away from it”, or words to that effect. I didn’t even bother to Google, I just *know* it’s going to be something like that. What sort of idiot would lead with his chin like that in the presence of Groucho? So, Dr Bob, “Duck Soup” or “A Night At The Opera”?

“And I’d like to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of this world”

“Any club that would have me as a member isn’t worth joining.” Whoops – wrong movie again….

“Are you the world?”

“Father, I do it to make up for all the despair your church has caused the world.”

“I do not thank you for all the joy that you have taken away from the world”. Well he did not but he should have

“I want to thank you for taking so much out” Bless him!

“Iceland is my only failure but, let’s face it, I wouldn’t want to bring joy to any country that would have me as a citizen.”

“I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” It probably wasn’t this one but this is one of my favourite Groucho quotes.

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”

“Thank you, and please take your hand off my butt.”

“You’re welcome” obviously. He was a polite guy. There might have been a clever one-liner in between but that’s what he meant. Probably.

And I wanna thank you, for all the joy you’ve taken out of this world.

And I’d like to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of the world.

And I’d like to thank you for all the misery you’ve brought the world.

“Thank you, Father,” Groucho replied. “And I want to thank you for all the joy you’ve taken out of it!” Nearly everyone will get this one right. [So it appears 😦 ]

Could I have some of it back for myself

Get off my back, why don’t you.

http://www.ibras.dk/comedy/marx.htm#Priests. I like the other priest story better.(I was in Italy, I was in Rome. Wonderful city. And I’d just lit a dollar cigar, and I was walking to the corner, and somebody bumped against me. It was a dollar cigar, I wasn’t gonna let it lay there, so I reached down to pick it up, and I said “Jesus Christ!” And I turned around, and there is two priests standing next to me, and one of them had bumped against me. He reached in here and pulled out two cigars, and he said “Groucho, you’ve just said the secret word.”)

I didn’t give it, it cost a buck an hour…?

I didn’t know Groucho ever spoke to priests. What kind of priest was he?

I didn’t know you guys were allowed to have mothers (Sounding suspiciously like f**k off)

I thank you for the removal of all that joy

I want to thank you for taking so much out.

I wish I could thank your church for the same thing….

I’d like to thank you for all the joy you have removed from it (or the guilt that stops people from getting any joy, or words to that effect)

I’d like to thank you for all the material (okay, I have no idea)

I’ll pass the plate around to the whole world.

Joy taken out of the world. How unfunny, the Aussies or the Brits would do better.

Nice dress, Madam

No problem

Nothing, he was on his death bed

Religion is the marijuana of the people. Godbotherers of the world Unite! You have nothing to lost but your chasubles.

Thanked the priest for all the joy he’s taken out of it… and when asked if that could be used in a sermon, asked for a 10% royalty. (Hubbard was right, there IS money to be made there…)

The obvious.

While not commonly known Groucho was one of the early pioneers in game theory. He suggested that joy(Groucho) + joy(priest) = 0.

Why, I’d horsewhip you if I had a horse.

Question 5

What percentage of cricket fans like the music of Bela Bartok?

Answer

88% (I do not recall who established this particular datum, or why)

Other Answers

“This is the most uncomfortable coffin I’ve ever been in.” Oh dear. That’s the wrong Bela isn’t it ?

0 probably. Now ask what percentage of cricket fans have HEARD OF Bela Bartok.

0%. I rounded to the neared 201%.

100% of equitable entomologists. Plus Richie Benaud

100-(those that don’t)

14% This 14% (or Lance Morton of Darwin) simply adores listening to the music of Count Dracula while watching hunky young men play catch in their pajamas.

15%

2

2

33 1/3

4

43

50% – with an error margin of +/- 50%

56

6.3%

90

A survey taken by the ICC last year during the Boxing Day test in Melbourne showed that 98.6% attending the game were Bartok aficionados. The remaining 1.4% seemed to be more interested in Philip Glass, but they were too pissed to give a sensible answer.

Ah, so *that’s* why they chirp all bloody night in summer, they’re actually singing along to their favourite albums. And all this time I thought they were doing it to attract mates. Or to annoy me. Stupid insects. I get my own back though, I feed ’em to my lizards.

All 100% of those that do.

All cricket fans love Bela’s music. Both are as boring as hell and they are the gene that causes it is currently seen as a genetic problem which genologists are looking at the relationship as I write this.

Assuming there are cricket fans who are sober enough to hear,4 again. They live next to the birds in question 3. this accounts for 0.0000000000000000000000000003% of cricket fans.

Iceland’s Cricket Club (ICC) claims eleven percent, but I suspect that’s only because eleven is a prime number.

In The Netherlands: 0,05%. (5000 players, 1 fan)

Is that the game of cricket or the insect? Let’s assume the game. But then how many cricket fans have heard the music of Bela Bartok? Probably most would like it if they did. This question is too hard. As to fans of the insect. About the same.

It depends whether they are independent, in which case (A intersection B) = P(A)*P(B), where A is the percentage of people who are cricket fans and B is the percentage of people who like Bela Bartok. [Wronggg! If they were independent it’d be just P(B)]. Of course, one would assume they were dependant or you would not have given us this question. This leads me to believe a song of Bartok’s has “cricket” in the title, which would make it 100%

It’s hard to pinpoint the number of Jiminy Cricket fans actually alive who might appreciate Bela Bartok, but I’d say approximately 50%.

Look for obvious websites. Nope.Try to anagram name so all the words are cricket words. Nope.Try a different meaning of cricket like that in entymology, or with Jiminy. Nope.With 3 and 4 gimmees any chance of winning? Nope.

None of the sensible ones, who all like Jack O’Hagan’s “Our Don Bradman” to the exclusion of all other choons.

On May 9, 1934, Bradman was out for a duck against Cambridge University. On May 25, Bela Bartok’s “Enchanted Deer” had its premiere. Three days later, inspired by the music, Bradman scored 160 in 124 minutes against Middlesex. All Australian cricket fans have liked and honoured Bela Bartok’s music since then.

Referring to the “cricket is getting married?” 95%; if referring to that “testing” game the fans would not have heard of him -0%

Survey of n = 3. “Bartok … who??” So in my experience 0%. But all though that his name sounded a little like leather on wood, so I may have started a new craze.

The fans of Buddy Holly and the Crickets did not like the music of Bela Bartok, they preferred Candy and the Sucky Pops.

The percentage of cricket fans who have even heard of Bartok would be insignificant (given that the largest population of cricket fans is in India and Pakistan), therefore, virtually none.

The same percentage of Buddy Holly And The Crickets fans who are Hungarians.

There’s a figure, but it falls below the standard error.

Unknown: when surveyed, 101% (with a 1% margin of error) of respondents replied, “Why do you care???”

Who?

Why is tenure a bad idea?

Question 6

What’s this?

Answer

This is an X-ray of an artificial knee recently installed in Barry Williams, CEO of Australian Skeptics. See picture; I don’t know if he likes Bartok. Rest assured, Andrew, I will not be using any more of Mr Williams’s body parts in future quizzes.

Airport security #1: Can you figure out what this is? It’s driving me bananas.Airport security #2: No, I can’t tell either. Let’s throw in the trowel.

A banana with an iron

A communist hammer and sickle that got all bent out of shape.

A Pablo Picasso?

A picture. Once this has been accepted it’s also clear that it’s a picture of a human armpit with a big black chunk of metal stuck in it. Or a goose. Either one is visible.

A really bad concretor’s trowel. Other, more deviant, things pop into my mind, but I push them away.

A self-portrait by Robert Motherwell. Or a pair of box cutters.

A Stalinist Stanley knife

A strange eastern european torture device, or a hammer and sickle device left out in the sun a little long.

Ah yes that special shape that would fit perfectly. With a handle to move it around. Fit where? You know, THERE. You see I knew this girl once before I got married and she would have known what it was. But I am a bloke so I wouldn’t. Would I?

An abandoned early symbol of the communist workers collective, (later replaced with the Hammer and Sickle) The Doorstop and Banana. Didn’t have a catchy ring to it and made no sense with Russia having neither.

An all-purpose eviscerator

An Icelandic ear-piercing device. It also serves as a receiver for coded messages and a secret identifier (rather like a Masonic handshake).

An x-ray of part of a zipper.

An X-ray of the world’s most uncomfortable speculum.

An X-ray photo. Apparently of the standard extraterrestrial control circuit implanted in all our brains. What, it doesn’t look like that to you? That’s obviously just because it prevents you from realizing what it is, so it must be working…

A banana with an erection being spooned by a grout float.

A catamaran. But what’s with the catamaran?

Doctor: Are you getting more iron in your diet?Patient: Yeah and I got the X-Ray to prove it!

Dunno but it looks really Hip don’t you think?

Fuzzy at best

Geometry instrument

Hybrid of a bent (not gay) chain saw and the Russian hammer and sickle

I have to say it looks disturbingly like something that was surgically implanted in my left leg for a couple of years. Or is it a Christian Brothers teaching aid?

I know I know … it’s an image. [Well, Barry said he was worried about improving his image. This must be it. Now I see what he means.]

It appears to be a mechanism which slices bananas lengthwise, banana included. If it isn’t, I’m inventing that. It could also conceivably be “Mad Vlad” Vladimir Kossovic’s unsuccessful communist symbol bid.

It is a popular dildo for oerang-oetangs called ‘The Black Banana’

It’s a negative of an xray of an old tool of some sort. [To which the owner of the part replied: Old “fool” perhaps, but my old tool doesn’t quite reach down to my knees even on a good day.]

It’s an ultrasound of an early Roman IUD.

It’s a velociraptor claw strapped to a handle. When used correctly, the police will think that your victim was killed by a dinosaur and thus you will get away with murder.

It’s an early Japanese can opener. (They needed to be that big to wedge open the tins of whale).

It’s what happens when you leave a banana, a sanding block and a paint brush on photosensitive paper. Alternatively it’s the negative of an Xray of the someone’s lunch. No, no, I’ve got it, it’s a still life.

Lock

No idea, but I’d hate to sit on it! [Not surprising. In fact I can’t think of anyone who might want to sit on Barry Willams’s knee]

Obviously, it’s a red rubber float used for grouting tile and a slice of juicy cantaloupe united by a primitive paring knife.

One of the prototypes for the Russian Revolution flags. One of Lenin’s comrades designed it when he was going through a depressed stage. At one point Hitler was looking at it as a potential for the Nazis but the Swastika got more votes from the SS. [They took votes?]

Painful if sat on

Question six of Dr Bob’s quiz.

So that’s where the fuel pump from my 1977 Kingswood got to….

Someone trying to smuggle a semi-automatic banana onto a plane. Thank goodness for the security screening.

Something weird and black. With a handle. Can we mention Hitler again now?

The Black Peril!!!!!

USO (Unidentified Strange Object)

[From Barry Williams] I know the answer, but for others the information is on a kneed-to-know basis.

Commentary:

Can I please use some of your questions in my own quiz? Specifically, Donald Duck’s middle name, and that cone thing the two soldiers are holding (I nearly fell of my chair laughing at some of the responses there!). Maybe one or two others, if suitable. [YES. Everyone please go ahead and use anything from the quiz, or from anywhere on the whole site, but accredit the Australian Skeptics web site somehow].

Again, thank you for no pictures of naked ladies on the quiz. [Are naked knees OK?]

Do you get marks for extravagant flippancy? [Yes]

Drive-by quiz submission. I made up my own rules: No Googling; Answers out of my own head; Time limit 5 minutes. I have to give the other sender-innerers a fair chance!

Give a man a match and he’ll be warm for an hour. Set him on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life….

I found your site this evening. I saw the John Safran vs. God episode on SBS where he met Bob Larson. Bob Larson performed an “exorcism”. I think John Safran was somehow hypnotised. How can I tell if he was? He appeared quite out of it.

I had a startling realization… of all the things Biblical and Finnish in your quizzes. You see, there was a mistranslation in Daniel and Revelation. They didn’t speak of the “end of the world”, they meant “the Finnish of all things”. These kinds of misinterpretations are easy when its common knowledge God only knows Hebrew, Aramaic, and 17th century English. So now, as set down in ancient days, our prophet Bob leads us in learning the Finnish of all things.

I made an entry on the June quiz from this email (xxx) and realized I made a mistake in my comments. In biblical references I meant Daniel, not David. This is what happens when you try to make a biblical joke while half asleep and a bit agnostic. Which oddly enough, is the same mental state many people attend church with…

I missed number 6 last month, but it’s not my fault. (I lived in an apartment complex on the Hayward fault once, however).

I never apologize. I’m sorry, that’s just the way I am. [Yes Joanne, I’d feel sorry too, if I was like you]

I only discovered your site today, and I LOVE IT! [And so do I, but what do you think of the site? tish boom]

If you take the negative of the picture question, you can see some of the surfaces more easily, but I’m still stumped.

I’m “late” this month and I think it’s yours.

I’ve just quit my job as a clairvoyant. Couldn’t see a future in it. (with thanks to the ‘Stand Up Skeptic’).

Just in case it takes a hyphenated last name to win I’ve supplied one. Can’t be too careful.

Leaving on Monday for Thailand. I’ll be 3 weeks. Would you be able to feed my fish? I meant to go to the shops and get one of those fish feeder tablets, but I’m busy until Sunday, and I can’t go out on the Sabbath can I? [Leave them alone, according to Darwinian principles. When you get back you’ll have one fully evolved, large, well-fed fish.]

listen to dr phil. and change your name from bob to hippy dee.

My mum says that kids are like waffles; no matter how carefully you think you’ve planned and prepared, the first one just doesn’t turn out right, and you have better luck with the next one. Yes, I am the eldest child in our family, funny you should ask…

So much speculation abounds this month as many of the questions are so ambiguous…hmmmm…maybe I’ll have a go later in the month to see if I might speculate further.

Thanks for letting me know about another couple of festivity days. More excuses to have a beer or two, or three …

Thankyou, I feel better now.

Very amusing questions Dr. Bob!

What is it with you and wind turbines Dr. Bob?

Where do you get these questions? [That is a meta-question]. Do they have answers? [Yes they do, of varying quality. See above]

Who is Dr Bob? What be he? why do he?

Will you send me the correct answers?

You don’t need me to tell you how to decrypt that country do you Doctor Bob? Nah, I didn’t think so. [Easy. “bttsszmhb” going one letter back, except missing the “m” and one letter forward for the “h”, and anagramming a bit gives “Assrryia”. Going one forward on all of it gives “cuuttanic” – hmm looks sort of familiar ….]